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| Sara Driver retrospective at the Roxy Cinema in New York |
The Roxy Cinema in New York this week will be screening with discussions Sara Driver’s You Are Not I with Claire Denis’ Keep It For Yourself, Sleepwalk, When Pigs Fly, Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Sara will introduce with Lewie Kloster and Noah Kloster their short Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. Alexis Adler and Al Diaz will join Sara following Boom For Real. George Franju’s Judex has been picked by Sara to screen tonight to complement her retrospective On the Bowery: Lost and Found Films of Sara Driver.
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| Sara Driver with Anne-Katrin Titze: “Sleepwalk is very influenced by Jacques Rivette …” |
In the second instalment of my conversation with Sara Driver on Zoom before the 50th anniversary edition of New Directors/New Films in 2021, we discussed the influence of Jacques Rivette (Le Pont Du Nord, Céline Et Julie Vont En Bateau) on Sleepwalk, Nan Goldin, Suzanne Fletcher, Ann Magnuson’s green blouse and Shirley MacLaine, Guy Maddin and dreams, elevators, the existence or not of Mount Olympus, fairy tales, You Are Not I, the connection to Stranger Than Paradise, and the deals made to complete Sleepwalk.
Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art’s 50th New Directors/New Films retrospective honoured only nine selections with free virtual screenings: Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous d’Anna; Wim Wenders’ adaptation of Peter Handke’s The Goalie's Anxiety At The Penalty Kick; Christopher Nolan’s Following; Eduardo Coutinho’s Twenty Years Later; Horace Ové’s Playing Away; Charles Burnett’s My Brother’s Wedding; Gregg Araki’s The Living End; Humberto Solás’s Lucía; Mani Kaul’s Duvidha; Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy, and Sleepwalk.
Sara Driver’s spellbinding Sleepwalk, co-written with Kathleen Brennan and Lorenzo Mans, shot by Jim Jarmusch and Frank Prinzi, with a score by Phil Kline, stars Suzanne Fletcher with Ann Magnuson, Steve Buscemi, Linda Yablonski, Sally Venue (aka Sally Berg), Richard Boes, Ako, Stephen Chen, Tony Todd, Dexter Lee, Harvey Perr, Barbara Klar, Cheryl Dyer, Rebecca Wright, and William Rice (aka Bill Rice).
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| Julie (Dominique Labourier) and Céline (Juliet Berto) with Madlyn (Nathalie Asnar) in Jacques Rivette’s Céline Et Julie Vont En Bateau |
Anne-Katrin Titze: When you presented You Are Not I at the New York Film Festival in 2011, we spoke about your projects concerning fairy tales. The link to tales is so present in Sleepwalk, besides Charlie Chan. Your protagonist [Suzanne Fletcher as Nicole] pricks her finger early on; in fairy tales that means they are going to sleep for 100 years or a baby is born in the next paragraph. There are the red shoes as well. Do you remember how tales entered your script?
Sara Driver: Well, I’ve always loved fairy tales and I remember reading mythology when I was a kid. I was about ten, I think, when I realized that the gods never existed. Up until that point I thought that Mount Olympus existed and the gods were all having a great time up there and messing with all the mortals below.
I just always loved tales and I remember when I was putting together Sleepwalk, I was reading a lot of folktales from different places all over the world. You know, Sleepwalk is very influenced by Jacques Rivette, I think in many ways. The film Le Pont du Nord. MoMA used to have a thing where you could rent a screening room and a 35mm print and invite 20 of your friends. I invited my cast and crew to watch Celine and Julie Go Boating [original title Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris].
AKT: I see.
SD: Rivette has a very fairy way he deals with Paris, very fairy-tale-ish. Also I was working in a Xerox shop when we were on hiatus for Stranger Than Paradise from 1982 to 1984. We were looking for the money to complete Stranger Than Paradise. So I worked in this Xerox shop and I used to get these flashes and sort of started hallucinating things. And then I would go out on the streets and something would echo what I had seen or heard. So I kept a journal. Sleepwalk was actually stitched together from my love of fairy tales and my journal.
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| Paul Bowles scholar Francis Poole with You Are Not I director Sara Driver and Richard Peña at the 49th New York Film Festival Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
AKT: You had the green flashes behind the eyes that we see in the film?
SD: Kind of similar.
AKT: Now we are staring into screens all the time.
SD: It has taken control. It finally took control. I know with Boom for Real, when I was at the New York Film Festival for that film, I said we were hanging out, we didn’t have computers. And hanging and not being on computers is so essential for the creative process. So everybody just put down your iPads and iPhones and hang out with people! Then everybody applauded, it was great.
AKT: I agree. At the same time, right now, I am glad we can communicate this way. Before our conversation, I just got off a Zoom meeting with Paris. There still is some sense of connection.
SD: There’s definitely a gift, but I think we spent a little … My problem is, I love to write. So I get these wonderful e-mails and then I spend all day long writing back.
AKT: It sucks you in. You have to be on constant alert. There are a lot of little details I liked so much in Sleepwalk. That green blouse Ann Magnuson is wearing, I would wear it right now!
SD: That was Ann’s blouse. We didn’t have costumers or anything, it was a very low budget film. The only reason I got to shoot it in 35 is that DuArt made a mistake on Stranger Than Paradise, when they were doing the processing. To Irwin Young, I said, “You have to give me a deal on my film. Look at what you have put us through on Stranger!”
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| Sara Driver: “Suzanne Fletcher is just an extraordinary human being. And Ann Magnuson … always reminded me a little bit of Shirley MacLaine.” Photo: Nan Goldin |
So then he gave me a deal where I got Sleepwalk processed for the same amount of money it would have cost for doing 16mm. So that was very lucky. We had such a supportive community then. Like Sound One, who were involved with sound in so many movies. And Billy, who ran Sound One, was always giving deals to filmmakers who didn’t have the money. There was such a supportive system.
AKT: You had a lot of overlap from the people who worked with you on You Are Not I, from the main character to your still photographer Nan Goldin. There was a lot of community.
SD: Yeah, that was the thing, we were all hanging out with each other. And Suzanne is a fantastic mind. Suzanne Fletcher is just an extraordinary human being. And Ann Magnuson, I didn’t know her personally, when I cast her. I did know her performances and she always reminded me a little bit of Shirley MacLaine. You know, the twinkle in her eye?
AKT: Yes, I can see that.
SD: Alluring, you know. And then living on the edge of Chinatown, we had this group of people who were all artists, trying to survive, having jobs like my Xerox job, because you didn’t pay too much money for rent and then you could create and work with your friends. I’m so privileged because Nan was a friend and she did all the stills for all of my movies and was always a great asset on the set too.
AKT: Dreams are very prominent in Sleepwalk. The elevator scenes! I had a conversation with Guy Maddin about elevator dreams. He made a short [The Rabbit Hunters] for the Fellini centenary in which Isabella Rossellini plays both Fellini and Giulietta Masina rolled in one.
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| Suzanne Fletcher as Nicole in Sara Driver’s Sleepwalk Photo: Nan Goldin |
SD: Oh great!
AKT: And of course there’s an elevator and he said that he has been harvesting and plucking from my dreams for years. And here is your freight elevator! Do you dream of elevators at all?
SD: No, that actually, I wrote that because I was working at the Film Center building on 42/43 Street and 9th Avenue. When I was editing You Are Not I, I had rented a small editing Steenbeck but I could only be there from 9 at night to about 4 in the morning of rental time, because I couldn’t really afford the machine.
And I would leave the Film Center building, which was quite a big building, late at night, and I never knew who would get on the elevator with me. It was a very terrifying time, because you would be trapped. So that scene actually didn’t come from a dream, that came from me being terrified at the Film Center building.
On Saturday, February 4, following the 7:30pm screening of Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Roxy Cinema there will be a discussion with Sara Driver, Alexis Adler, and Al Diaz. Also on the 4th, following the 5:45pm screening of Sleepwalk and on Wednesday, February 1, following the 5:45pm screening of You Are Not I, and after the Thursday, February 3, 7:00pm show of When Pigs Fly, Sara Driver will participate in discussions. And on Friday, February 3, before the 7:15pm screening of Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver and Stranger Than Paradise, she will join Lewie Kloster and Noah Kloster for an introduction.
Read what Sara Driver had to say on Sleepwalk being between reality and dreams and with Ed Bahlman on the New York City they remember.
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| Lewie Kloster and Noah Kloster’s award-winning Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver |
Read what Sara Driver, Alexis Adler, and Ed Bahlman had to say on Jean-Michel Basquiat, the original idea for Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and the thriving creative world of New York City in the Seventies and Eighties.
Coming up - Alexis Adler on everything happening at the same time, a strong sense of community, a Jean-Michel Basquiat panel at The New School with Al Diaz, Michael Holman and Annina Nosei, Kevin Young’s book To Repel Ghosts, the Bishop Gallery connection to her recent HBCU tour and Sara Driver on prophet artists, screening Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat at Miami Basel, Beck Underwood’s fantastic Super 8 clothesline animation, and teaching kids at NYU to “make your mistakes.”
